criterionforum.org

yoshimori wrote:

domino harvey wrote:You sure do love handing out Fs

I do?

Is that you, Mike D'Angelo? Hey, I think you were pretty harsh on Rescue Dawn. To me it's more of a 53.503952409 than a flat 53. I do realize that you have higher standards than us peons though.

Interesting piece on the AV Club today - For Our Consideration: Did 12 Angry Men get it wrong?

D'Angelo seems to leave a whole lot out of his argument to serve the purposes of the article. One quick example: He cites the idea that perhaps the old man made up having seen the murder to feel important. In the film, that speculation came on the heels of a lengthy discussion of why it's physically impossible for him to have seen the murder in the first place. That was never the crux of the argument.

mfunk9786 wrote:D'Angelo seems to leave a whole lot out of his argument to serve the purposes of the article. One quick example: He cites the idea that perhaps the old man made up having seen the murder to feel important. In the film, that speculation came on the heels of a lengthy discussion of why it's physically impossible for him to have seen the murder in the first place. That was never the crux of the argument.

Haha what Mike D'Angelo taking things out of context to further an argument that doesn't have much merit in the first place? Well I never

Seriously, though, the kid is "almost certainly guilty" (says the man who didn't actually see the trial, which is kind of the point) despite obviously having a terrible, disinterested lawyer and a bunch of holes in the prosecution's case. I'm not sure D'Angelo gets the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' thing.

The very first line of the AV Club's review of A Master Builder

Even people who detest filmed theater (otherwise known as “right-thinking people”) acknowledge that 1994’s Vanya On 42nd Street is a magnificent exception to the rule.

The title of the review is "Filmed theater is a mistake, even when the play is Ibsen’s great Master Builder"

Admins, can we just add the suicide booth GIF in as a default emoticon, because we need it a lot more than most of those little yellow guys

Does he mean films made out of plays, or theatrical productions that have been recorded on film?

He means movie adaptations that he deigns as functioning "just" as filmed theatre, though he doesn't really back that up in any convincing fashion (but thankfully there's plenty of condescension from the critic in the comments). All I can think when I see a comment like this is the long laundry list I can pull off the top of my head of great films which are stage bound and still amazing films, and when his examples are just Criterion movies starring one of the leads, it makes me second guess how much he even knows about what he speaks

I presume the second though his examples make it seem like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

knives wrote:I presume the second though his examples make it seem like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Ha, I just edited my post to add just such a suggestion. It really does

And of course the critic is D'Angelo. Has he ever been anything other than condescendingly wrong about a subject he's ignorant about?

An example of exactly that:

Not quite, alas. This time around, the film’s primary asset is the play itself, which has been faithfully “translated”—at least according to the credits—by Shawn. (Since he reportedly doesn’t know a word of Norwegian, it would be more accurate to say that he’s revised someone else’s translation.)

It is, of course, perfectly common for people to write translations without knowing the original language.

Perfectly common, maybe, but also frowned upon, I would hope. I know most older translations made this way (several early Don Quixote translations to English, for example) have been thoroughly discredited.

Ugh, Mike D'Angelo is the most infuriating movie writer, I can hardly bear it that he's the one guy on both the Dissolve and the AVClub. I can never quite crystallize what it is about his writing that so irritates me (though this review comes close) but I don't think I've ever read anything he's written and thought 'oh, that's an interesting take', nor been inspired to seek anything out based on what he's said. He makes me yearn for a middle-of-the-road plodder like A.A. Dowd, who at least has the grace not to take some half-understood piece of film theory, blow it out of proportion, and apply it meaninglessly to all of his reviews.

FerdinandGriffon wrote:Perfectly common, maybe, but also frowned upon, I would hope. I know most older translations made this way (several early Don Quixote translations to English, for example) have been thoroughly discredited.

In the field of poetry, at least, it is quite standard for translators to work from cribs. And the point I intended to make is that the result -- good, bad, or indifferent -- is still called a translation. Shawn's rendering should be judged on its fidelity, its quality as English prose, and whether it's sufficiently different from other translations to qualify as original work. But I think the critic is incorrect to quibble over whether Shawn "really" translated it.

It's also common practice for playwrights to work from literal translations.

Three major British playwrights have produced acclaimed versions of The Seagull over the last two or three decades, but only Michael Frayn speaks fluent Russian himself and worked directly from Chekhov's original text: Christopher Hampton and Tom Stoppard worked from literal translations, which they then rendered into more idiomatic English.

The latest example of the AV Club not knowing what they're talking about -- but as ever the comments are actually worse

So are you saying you're not glad that we as a society have moved past the man/child love craze of the '60s?

D'Angelo seems to have missed the fact that the film's central relationship was "potentially incendiary" even in its time (not from the standpoint of contemporary mores), as well as one of the simplest points to the story, about how but was in fact an innocent but unconventional platonic relationship between these two damaged characters who were unfairly judged based on suspicion and misunderstanding. He has so little at hand to suggest that it was actually suspicious that he can't help trying to score a point by latching onto the word "steeple cock," meaning weathercock or weathervane—in the English translation, not in the original French—even though he probably realizes it doesn't hold up. Oh, but there's a "vibe," so, "Hey Beavis, she said 'cock' - huh-huh-huh!" Gross.

The opening paragraph seems disingenuous

Judging old movies by contemporary mores is a tricky business. Smug superiority isn’t the ideal frame of mind for much of anything in life, but it’s particularly toxic when regarding the past; self-congratulation gets in the way of engagement, with problematic aspects of otherwise superlative work looming so large that it becomes hard to see past them.

...considering that the review that follows is little more than morally superior judgments of Pierre of and a tossed off assessment that "there's not much else to enjoy" in the film.

In other words: Hooray for emotional regression!

The film is not cheering for emotional regression. That's another big "reach" here to justify a judgmental stance. One of the central emotional focuses of the film is Pierre's relationship with his girlfriend Madeleine and how painful it is that they cannot have a "normal" relationship.

The descriptions do make me wonder whether Mel Gibson virtually remade this film as The Man Without A Face.

Mother's gone too far; she's put cardboard over her half of the television. We rented "Man Without a Face"... I didn't even know he had a problem!

it's not even a review of the movie, it's a review of the feelings a contemporary person might have watching it.

and a theoretical person at that.

domino harvey wrote:The latest example of the AV Club not knowing what they're talking about -- but as ever the comments are actually worse

To be fair, this is a specific Mike D'Angelo problem more than it is an AVClub (or The Dissolve, as he is bizarrely the one staff member who is employed by both) problem.

Mike D'Angelo's at it again with a whole review full of idiocy

Technically, the film has never been remade, but that’s largely because, in spirit, it has never stopped being remade.

Well, except for Eve Knew Her Apples and You Can't Run Away From It. I guess since those aren't "technically" remakes and are instead literally remakes, that makes it true though

Like any movie made 80 years ago, It Happened One Night features various elements that now feel dated—not in a bad way, just in the sense that they would need to be rewritten for a contemporary audience.

A movie from the 30s containing references which are no longer commonplace does not make a film dated, it makes it necessary to consider the film's cultural context for a fuller understanding. You know, that thing that all film students (or, well, any LA major) learn how to do in 101.

The two of them make it look easy, but decades of pale imitators prove that it’s anything but.

This is the ending line, out of nowhere, based on nothing. Odds that D'Angelo has even seen five Hollywood studio system romantic comedies (pale imitators or not) made within thirty years of either side of this (and not released by Criterion, as that seems to be his default exposure to film in general)?

My goodness, you aren't kidding.

One of the film’s saltiest bits, for example—it was released just a few months before the infamous Hays Production Code went into effect—sees Peter intimidate Ellie onto her side of the newly erected wall of Jericho by proceeding to undress in front of her, narrating the process as if he were shooting a documentary on the subject. (Legend has it that sales of undershirts plummeted when Gable pulled off his top shirt to reveal only his bare chest.) Jennifer Aniston would just raise an eyebrow as Gerard Butler’s trousers drop, not scurry behind a barrier in alarm.

That is, perhaps literally, the most banal observation imaginable. Things now are different then they were then! Also, the movie is black and white and a different aspect ratio, and the actors are all dead!

All the ingredients are there: arrogant man, defiant woman, one or more boring rivals, some logistical impediment, shared adventures with optional cross-country road trip, a gradual thawing, and a miscommunication that threatens to scuttle this new romance at the last minute.

Good thing Mike D'Angelo isn't familiar with the decades and decades' worth of musical comedies, at the very least, that had more or less exactly this plot before this movie, some even released by Criterion (I'm thinking here of the Lubitsch musicals box Eclipse set, but I'm sure there are others.)